9. The Prestige (2006)
Thriller to Sci-Fi Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) are rival magicians in fin de siècle London; endlessly outdoing each other in the search for the most convincing stage illusion. Angier sabotages Borden's 'bullet catch' trick, Borden ruins Angier's 'vanishing bird' routine- and so on. But the one trick that eludes them both is The Transported Man, in which the magician enters a cabinet at one point of the stage and exits from another. Angier claims he has mastered it, yet Borden suspects the use of a double. As the race continues and tensions grow, the audience are unsure whether to anticipate victory or disaster. The answer, we discover, is somewhere in the middle... It would appear that the biggest trick Borden has up his sleeve is the assistance of a certain Nikola Tesla (enigmatically played by David Bowie). After sending his rival on a diversionary trip to the inventor's door, Borden can now enjoy the undivided attention of the audience. Yet this ploy has unwittingly played into the hands of Angier; who may have stumbled upon the perfect Transported Man after all. Tesla's early, unsuccessful attempts at constructing a transporter had taken a toll on Angier's patience- but then they're granted a sudden stroke of luck. Rather than transporting an object from one place to another, the machine has created a duplicate at the destination instead. So is Angier the winner? Well, not quite. Borden has a solution of his own; one that seems misleadingly simple. The film's main talking point is undoubtedly its ending. It may have cemented Christopher Nolan's reputation as one of cinema's foremost head-scratchers, but while some were quick to celebrate such a twist, others were less than satisfied to have the rug pulled from under them. For them, introducing such sci-fi elements as human cloning into a Victorian setting was a step too far. Especially when they seemed to come out of nowhere; indeed, the opening and closing scenes seem a million miles apart. But then, starting in one place and finishing in another; isn't that the sign of a perfect trick? Isn't that the sign of a perfect movie?